Could Patrick Mahomes START The Season?

0:00It's the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day. What's up everybody? This is Ross Jackson, one of the hosts of the Lockdown Podcast Network, and if you haven't heard yet, we started a club and we would love for you to join. It's called the Everydayer Club, and one of the things that you get as a member is an ad-free version of the podcast that you're listening to right now. It works with whatever podcast app you already use, same episodes every day, just no ad. There's also a member's only group chat for fans of your team, plus a lot more. You can check it out by tapping the Everydayer Club link in the show notes. Kansas City Chiefs Podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day.

1:05Welcome in Chiefs Kingdom. Thanks for joining us yet again. I'm Ryan Tracy, founder of Rogue Analytics, where you can get the Matrix right now. It's up there in the draft guide is coming very shortly. This is Chris Clark, over KC Chiefs Corner, you know him. We are going to get after it today. A lot of little bits of news as the owner's meetings got started. Later we're going to talk about, could there be a referee lockout? What would that mean? What would that look like? How frustrated will we get? Yes. There are different answers to all of those questions. And then before that, we're going to get to, most likely, the Chiefs are not going to play in that opener per the Chiefs' own chairman, not going to play against the Seahawks in that opening game, which I think is critical to what we're talking about first. And that is Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reed from the owner's meetings was able to say that, hey, you know, we have him and he's done the work and he's very much ahead of schedule. We don't want to do anything to wreck that. So hey, let's take it easy on the scheduling thing. I felt he was pretty optimistic about the NFL not trying to get the Chiefs on prime time,

2:07week one or right off the batter, whatever. And it was his guess that they weren't going to do that. Well, I think, I don't know if that's pre-shadowing or him putting his expectations out there. But if they put the Chiefs on the schedule to open the season when they weren't in the Super Bowl last year, I think that's ridiculous. And I think we have to cry for all of that point. Yeah, well, the NFL does what the NFL wants. And I mean, they're starting the season on a Wednesday this year. So if we're looking at how this is going to work out for the Chiefs or for this, for just the NFL in general, I mean, it kind of makes sense that the Chiefs would be the opening game against the Seahawks because when they play the Seahawks, two, they play just about every single game for every single day of the week. So it would not shock me for Kansas to be on that list. But it sounds like Clark Hunt doesn't believe they will be. The other side of it, though, and this is the bigger key is the NFL is going to make a bet as to what is going to be the most popular possible game that they can put out

3:08there and not knowing because the schedule release will come out. I believe in May, shortly after the draft, maybe a little later than that. But not knowing if Patrick Mahomes will be available. Why would you put the Chiefs in prime time to open the season? That does not make sense. It doesn't. And we're going to talk about that and how ridiculous is and how idiotic the idea is coming up later in the show. But to your point, Patrick Mahomes is really what this is surrounding around me. And that's, it's great that Andy can say he's just a head of schedule. That doesn't mean he plays week one that had a schedule means maybe he actually participates in training camp. Maybe he's ready for week one. We don't know there's there's variations in there. Quite frankly, there's a lot of things that have to happen between now. And then for those of you that are seeing reports around that Patrick could participate in OTAs, that's absolutely ridiculous. They we would should all sue them. Should they allow Patrick Mahomes to be on the field at all in OTAs because that's just too much of a risk to the entire franchise.

4:09And we all know if when he goes down, stuff gets ugly very, very fast. I bet that's not a chance they could even consider. I would mostly agree with you, although it's not going to shock me if he's out on the sidelines throwing the ball. I mean, participate. I'm with you there like hard to keep him away, right? Yeah, so it's I, you know, I agree with you. I don't think he's really going to be out there participating in OTAs. But again, it's Patrick Mahomes. Who knows what he's going to do. We neither of us expected it to be throwing this at this point. And yes, he's not doing full throws. He's not doing all that like I get it. But at the same time, it's like one of those things. It's like, okay, well, we didn't expect him to be where he is right now. And he's there. What else is he going to do that we don't expect? That is the big question. And as much as being ahead of the schedule is great. Honestly, that just buys you more time to be prepared. And I think for Patrick in particular, knowing that whatever he has to do has to change basically his style of play.

5:10So they can settle down and protect himself a little bit more. I think more preparation time, even if you are ahead of the schedule is still smart. So I'm not taking anything off the table. I still think that it's, it's iffy, if he starts week one, say 50, 50. I think it's even more likely that he misses two to four games still. Even if he is, quote unquote, ready to go by his own admission. There's a certain point here where the team itself has to look out for him. Maybe more so that he looks out for himself. We know that he's driving. We know that he takes chances. You got to protect him from himself at times. The other question would become, does it get to a point where maybe him coming back is he plays week one, but he only plays a half or a quarter or something else, trying to get into football shape and trying to get into a point where he is going to be okay. And like I know, but the problem with that is, you know, just as well as I do, Patrick, my home doesn't like coming off the field when he can play. So that's going to be an issue.

6:11I mean, it's a lot. And I'm not trying to put words in Andrew Reed's mouth or anything like that. That's not what the point is. It's the fact that owners meetings are like kind of the oasis in the pre draft process. Were you actually here from somebody? There's little snippets at the combine. There's little snippets at the owner's meeting and then it's pretty, pretty dark until the post draft round conferences, right? So trying to glean what you can here doesn't necessarily reflect what's going to be happening the first week of May. So we got to take that into account as well. And I'm I for one and pretty pumped, went to Royals opener today, standing there. It looked absolutely great. I can tell you that I'm a thousand percent positive. He can stand at a baseball game. But that's all I can really like say is for sure at this point, right? Yeah, I mean, again, it goes back to what is he going to be able to do? Where is he and and this goes back to what we talked about a couple of weeks ago when it came to him.

7:12He is going to have things at his fingertips that most people will not have the access to. That is going to speed up his recovery process that's going to speed up where he's going to be. And I guarantee you, Bobby's troop is going to have something going on that gets him in a scenario where he is going to be good to go as quickly as possible as safely as possible. So that's also going to play into this. And you know that even we've heard my homes is always at arrowhead. Like he is still always at arrowhead now working with Julie Frymeyer and everybody in the in the training staff. And you know he's working on the outside of that as well, trying to do other things and trying to get strength back, trying to get to a point where he can do things. Walking and standing and all of that is a pretty big step considering the surgery he had. And you know, it's it's one of those items where you just kind of hope that things continue. You go smoothly as they have been and he doesn't press it too far too fast because that's obviously the major concern.

8:12Yeah, yeah, absolutely and not going to fast is Clark's concern as well. Want to give you guys a shout out Brian, been with us for 10 years, rocking it, appreciate you. We are live for you as we are every now and then we try to give you some of these. So thank you guys for being in here. And if there's anything crazy, maybe we'll answer it here later in the third portion of the show, but next is really about what Clark had to say and about what he doesn't expect to happen. And that is hopefully they don't get thrust into week one. We'll have more on that next. What if sports were traded like markets. Now you can put your sports IQ to work in real time with Robinhood prediction markets. It's not you against the house. It's you participating in a live market. You can buy or sell your positions live all game long. User sports knowledge in the moments that matter Robinhood prediction markets changes the game. It's people moving the action so that when momentum shifts, you can move with it. I always knew the game, but I never had a dynamic way to apply that knowledge.

9:14Now I can actually take part live in a market powered by people. You no longer have to be a spectator play by play. You decide trade every play with Robinhood now available across the US download the Robinhood app now and begin futures and clear swaps trading involved significant risk is not appropriate for everyone event contracts are offered by Robinhood derivatives LLC a registered futures commission merchant and swap firm. I'm going to read some very specific words from Clark con here because I want to make sure that I'm not misconstruing anything to anyone else, but the long story short is where do you put them on the schedule now for years and years and years, it's been pretty habit to get them on early in the schedule because as you said earlier, it's about the match up the product that the NFL can put on the field early in the season, particularly the season opener. But they haven't been in the Super Bowl coming off this last season, they've been nodding the playoffs like this is very much an atypical year, so I think it deserves an atypical treatment. Do you disagree?

10:25I would agree with you that it deserves atypical treatment, but is the NFL going to yeah, you look at this and you look at it and can't see didn't have a good year last year. That's why they're picking night that we're all in the draft. Does that change the amount of times that they get prime time games? Generally speaking, when you're not a good team, you don't get a ton of prime time games. I don't know this is going to be a fascinating almost study to an extent to find out whether or not the league believes in Patrick Mahomes has the face of the league versus not putting a team that did poorly in a lot of prime time games. Does he get the normal six prime time games this year versus, you know, or does he get, you know, two or three? I'm not sure if the league is going to do, but not being in the opener would be a great start. I agree and this is exactly what Clark Hunt said today. When referencing about the question of whether the chiefs are not expected to play the season opener against Seattle, he said, I don't think that's on the table anymore.

11:32I think from a league standpoint, there would be some concern whether Patrick would be ready to go. That tells me a couple of things. One, that hopefully that's the case, not expected to start the season in Seattle. Okay, that's good knowing that Seattle is going to start the opener right that that helps. But it also tells me that the league wants to put Patrick. Front and center like they usually do, but it also tells me like this would only be a consideration if the team felt Patrick was going to be ready for week number one. So it all kind of goes together with what we're talking about is no, we don't expect them to play that game and part of is because Patrick. But it's also because we don't know if Patrick's going to be ready for it and they can't take that chance. And I think that's actually comforting from a recovery standpoint for Patrick. Let's keep the pressure off of him. That's how I'm reading it and am I got too much tinfoil around my head at the moment. I don't know that you have too much tinfoil. I think the Clark probably has an idea of what the league is looking at and what they're thinking.

12:36But I would also think that he's probably also trying to push in some way, shape, or form. Hey, let's not be the start of the season because it's not going to work out best for the chiefs or the NFL. Really, it doesn't work out best for the NFL because the worst thing that could possibly happen for the entire NFL. And I do mean this literally is my homes gets rushed back because they play Wednesday on week one and something happens week one. That happens. That's going to cause major, major meltdowns. I agree. And it's my personal belief. And this is also with tinfoil. I still believe on reflection now many, many months removed that the fact that they sent them to Brazil to start that season screwed their whole season. I do think it's not the only cause, but it was the tipping point. It was the first domino that fell the injury to Xavier, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The fatigue that that team went under it looked like they didn't recover it from it honestly until they're out of the playoff on.

13:40It didn't look like they were normal to me most of last season. And I still go back to that opening weekend in Brazil. I'm not going to argue that, but I would also say that it's also possible that it's just years and years and years of continued running at 21 games a year. Just catching up to you like this team like the veterans on this team have been playing so many more games than most of the roster. Like if you go back and look, what is this year, 10, year 11 that they're going into, I believe, or something like that. I mean, it's close to, so they came in 2013. So I guess 13 years, Andy Reed's been in the playoffs. And they've been challenging for AFC championships for the seven previous years before, before missing the playoffs this year. Think about how many extra games that means. All of that just tells you that they're going to be playing a ton of extra games, almost the seasons worth of games for some of the guys.

14:43Over a five or six year period. Yeah, it's a ton. And it's, it's pretty ridiculous at that point. I, I feel like that probably is a factor as well. And I think they need to take off some of that extended pressure of all the travel, the international, all those things. Clark went out to say that in addition, about that Seattle game started this season, my guess is the NFL won't want to take that risk. We've all seen some of the videos of my home's rehab. But every indication he's ahead to schedule. It hasn't really worked, he's, and he has worked really hard to get ahead of schedule. And, unquote, and that's really the thing is like, yes, he's doing this. Yes, he's fairly miraculous in his time line already. So don't screw it up by taking advantage of that NFL and, and cutting literally the leg out from your biggest prime time star. Oh, and the bigger thing that they should be looking at is what is going to drive the audience late in the season. And it's going to be the chiefs in my homes. I mean, that go look at the TV reports of who's watching the games.

15:56So, you know, the audience that most of the chiefs games get that go on prime time TV. Yeah, it's not just the chiefs. I mean, obviously, you know, everybody loves the NFL. It's, it's the biggest support in the United States. And that's a huge deal. So you have to take that into consideration. But generally speaking, the chiefs are usually one of the teams that is the big draw for those prime time games. And if you're going to put the chiefs in prime time, you want my homes available. That makes more sense of having later in the season prime time games. But the thing here's the caveat that I'm going to hate that also could lead to Thanksgiving and Christmas again. Yeah, let's hope not. I mean, at this point, I can live with a Thursday night, right? But I cannot go to that point where they're constantly playing on holidays, et cetera. Let's hope that that spotlight doesn't land on them. But there is another group of people that are under the spotlight more and more, especially last four or five seasons. Since the chiefs playoff run and Super Bowl runs started really, no one's been under the spotlight as much as them. Or maybe the refs, but they might get locked out next season. What do it look like coming up?

17:06Folks, remember, you can get in our everyday or clubs. You don't want to listen to the audio ads and you can get into our exclusive discord. Just sign up for the everyday or club anytime you want at locked on cheese dot supercast dot com. It's your team every single day, just like we are. And we appreciate you. I do want to announce to the draft guide is coming over at rogapc.com. The matrix is already out there. Use that code L.O.C. to get your discount. Check out NFL 33 where my rankings are going to start to get posted here as we clean up and put the final touches on them. Because this draft is going to be critical. And I will say this. There's been no group that has been more frustrating for me as a podcaster or you as a fan base for the last three or four years. Because there's literally nothing I can say anytime that there's a repping problem that can make anything better. Because I can't defend bad calls and I can't defend the fact that they have to be people making them, right. But now it might get in my opinion significantly worse.

18:15If the referees do get locked out. You're looking at trying to call up some college referees trying to make more guys viable here, right. It's still not a full time gig. Talk about that in a second. That means that guys that usually ref high school might have to ref some lower level college games. It is a cascade that affects the entire referee ranks. And I think given how thin it's been on on consistency of calls lately. It's going to be an utter mess if this happens because I just don't trust who they're going to have on the field. Well, it goes further than that because I think there's some potential rule changes and refs being able to or at least the league being able to do stuff from the booth. If they see something that is egregious, I believe that's coming into 2026. We'll see how that works out, which that could create a huge mess in it of itself with your regular referees. Let alone replacement refs, but it does sound like they're looking at trying to get replacement refs.

19:18And starting to hire and train them maybe as soon as may and getting them to ref some of the spring games for the UFL. And I mean, sure, you can do that. But it's not the situation you want. There's a couple of different things though that really play into this that is going to be fascinating for me. When you start talking about the collective bargaining and how all that's going to work. It doesn't sound like the refs want to be full time like they don't want to be too extent. I don't think they want to be locked into that specific thing and that specific thing only. I think that's a mistake. I don't disagree with you, but some of your most senior refs are guys to do different things during the week and travel literally every weekend to go ref. Yeah, and that's true. And maybe that I comes back to who's willing to take other responsibility of a professional league like this.

20:24I have a day job. I do this as well. So I understand that kind of not leaving one for the other. But the fact is that the product on the field is suffering. And asking to get more from guys who are not dedicated to it. Still to me seems like a temporary solution to a bigger problem. I don't disagree, but I would also argue until you get to a point where all of this is done in the in the realm of video control. I don't know that you're really going to get rid of like you can get rid of some of it. You can make them better. But there's still people. They're still going to make mistakes. It's still going to have issues. There's only so much you can take out of it because it is, you know, a human that's going to be making the call or seeing what they think they see. And the other problem is you don't really see the ref angle. Like you get an idea based on what you see on the camera angle, but the ref could have a completely different angle that makes something look completely different than what the TV is showing because the angle's different.

21:31And that makes it even more difficult and I don't want to see control go to New York. I think there's there's some good pieces of that for an additional review, but I also think sticking your nose into a live game when you're not there based on, like you said, all those multi angles. I just don't think that's the way to go. I think the best way to get the best product is to have people dedicated to do it all the time and are there in person. That's that's just the way it's got to go in my opinion. Well, and I'm not saying that it can't, but you're going to have to figure out, okay, how are you going to pay? I mean, the pay is going to be different because it's going to be looked at as a full time gig versus what they're getting right now. I don't know what the hang up with the negotiations are, but I do know that, you know, adding an extra game, which is also being talked about right now. Is going to be one of those things that is going to complicate things as well for the rest because that's an extra week of work or work. It's, you know, how do you, like there's lots of different questions. I think one of the things that I saw was seniorities not supposed to be playing into playoff rankings or who works the playoffs. It's supposed to be the NFL. I think I think what I saw at least don't quote me on this was that the NFL wants to go who does the best job should be the guys that are in the playoffs versus.

22:51Looking at who your senior refs are and putting them in the playoffs agreed and I think that's the much better way to go as well is the question is how do you grade them. So they have their own internal system. I don't know anything about it because I've never seen anything released about it, but whoever grades out the best should be the people making the calls on the biggest games and that's the postseason. So that makes complete nuttersence to me, which is rare for me to say about the way that the league makes decisions. So hey, let's run with it. What, you don't like to agree with the league very often? I just don't. It's not that I don't like to fair enough. No, I think the big question when it comes to all of this is how does this end up affecting the players, how does it end up affecting games? I will say, it doesn't shock me that the NFL is already trying to get ahead of this and get to a position where they already have a plane in place. I know people are going to hate it because they're going to hate anything that's not the normal. The normal problem is it's either that or be locked out of potentially being able to play games. So which would you rather do miss games because the enough because the referees are on strike or are locked out. I mean, yeah, you could do that, but then you're losing billions and you're not getting, you're not getting that back. I mean, you know, so how does all this play out.

24:09It's going to be something. The other part of this that I wonder and I haven't heard anything about this, but you also have to wonder how does international travel play in any of this because that would affect some of some of these guys to because you're talking about even more and more international games and I heard something else about they were looking at they want to move to eight and 18 game season in every single team play an international game, which I absolutely hate, but it doesn't shock me. No, the logistics are crazy and that just goes. They see the value they can make them the money. So why not put it back into the into the foundation of this or because I agree to that's the players are going to block it that and I don't blame them a bit. I've seen conflicting data projections about what that will do to injuries. Your point about having a second by week that does make a lot of sense, but now we're talking about we have to start games in August and we're not going to start the playoffs until late January. I mean, that's great. And nobody watches more football than I do, but are they going to wear out their fan base if we really get to that point.

25:19Well, yeah, do you do you really want to start football before one more or sorry before Labor Day? I mean, that's really what you're talking about. And if you don't do that, then you're you're right. You're running the playoffs late starting the playoffs late in January and getting done in late in February. Like think about that part of it as well. Like you're you're talking about two weeks and that doesn't sound like a huge deal. But when you start talking about the fact that you have a by week between the Super Bowl. So, you know, yes, that doesn't count to the extra two weeks, but you're talking about how long that season already is. I mean, you're not going to get time off. Like you're talking the first week of February generally has been when Super Bowl is. And if this goes through unless they move games up, then you're going to be in a scenario where you're talking in the third week of February is when Super Bowl is. And how much rest is that going to give your team before you start talking about getting back into everything else. And not only that free agency will be kicking off less than a month later.

26:25At that point, if if that's when it starts like yes, you can do it, but you start talking about how many games these players play and all the weeks and all the time. You're condensing the amount of time off that they're going to be able to get. And it seemed like the chiefs it could affect a lot because like I said, since my homes has been here and they've been on this tear, they've probably played a full seasons or with the games or close to a full seasons or with the games extra over most of other teams. Well, yeah, over most situations, I guess, I'll put it that way, not that teams that have been having success, but over most teams, I guess. So, right. It's just it's crazy. Quite a few as well. That's fair. Yeah, like take this year, for example, right. The next Super Bowl is on Valentine's Day of 27 February 14th. If you had two weeks, you're talking about playing Super Bowl Sunday, the last day of February. The last day, like literally you're in March for your Super Bowl hangover 11 days before the league started this year, and then two weeks later, you're doing free agency, which means the combine is off, which means all the offseason is off the entire league has to change not just what's on the field, but the whole way that the league runs and how all of us have to deal with it.

27:41Well, but the other way you could fix that is started earlier and start football in August, but that's not a good scenario either because one you're going to be dealing with worse weather, heat wise, and you're also going to be in a scenario where you're still, I mean, no matter what you do, you're going to crunch the the holiday time or the free time of players after season or after the playoffs or after the Super Bowl. You're going to do that regardless. So there's no way about there's no way getting around that, but then you're also talking about you'd be having to move training camp, potentially two weeks earlier. And so you're cutting into the basically the first part of July. Yeah, mid July early July. No thanks. No thanks. I mean, I don't even know if it'll be a getaway for the Raiders to usually go to an app of Valley, right in Northern California. That's still going to be extremely hot. And you're talking about mid July to report to camp. It's nuts. And there's no easy solution. We're going to see what happens with the reps. We're going to see what happens with this whole like team game thing. What we do know.

28:43So we're going to get little tidbits here through the owner's meetings about your cheese. We're going to have them all for you this week as we always do tomorrow. It's Matt Derek coming back with us. You're going to see more from me over on RGR. You're going to see Chris on the squad show this week. You're going to see him over at KC Chiefs Corner. I'm an NFL 33.com and RGR football.com and you can get the matrix as well as the draft guy that's coming at rogapc.com use that code. LLC. We appreciate you guys being here. We have a bonus for you today as well. So don't miss that. You'll see that coming up here shortly. But it's all together as we get ready for the culmination of the offices in the NFL draft and where we're going with that. Have a great one and we'll catch you next time. You